Idaho (Mesa Falls)

My sister is visiting with her kids, so we've been trying to find interesting things to see that don't involve driving too far (since she has a five hour drive on either end from here). Also, my kids have been in school. We took them to Mesa Falls the other day, which is some north of Ashton. If you drive to Yellowstone from Idaho Falls, you'll go up the 20 through Ashton, which is where the Snake River valley ends and the mountains and the national forest begin. So this is up there, halfway to Island Park.



These rocks make me think of that scene at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring (film) where they're boating on the river and meet the giant stone statues:



We also found tons of Knackbeeren bushes. I have no idea what they are called in English (though they are supposedly native to North America, NOT Germany, where I know them from). You pick off the white berries and step on them, and they pop with the same satisfaction as bubble wrap. (Don't eat them, though--they cause vomiting.)

Idaho (Napoleon Dynamite, anyone?)

Today we went to the sand dunes at St. Anthony. If you have seen Napoleon Dynamite, you will recognize this as where Napoleon's grandmother breaks her leg fourwheeling, and where Uncle Rico films himself throwing a football and trying to relive the glory days of high school. And indeed, this is mostly what goes on here:



It's quite a strange landscape. There are irrigated farms all around, and some low mountains/foothills, and in between, some serious dunes! This picture shows all kinds of landscapes: in the foreground there's volcanic basalt, then the really superfine sand of the dunes, then a completely random grove of aspens (seriously, these things grow in weird places!), then sagebrush growing on broken volcanic basalt, some juniper trees, and then a foothill covered with evergreens.